Devlog 13

The landlord game was the first game in the United States to receive a patent in 1904 made by a quaker woman by the name of Lizzie Magie. She invented the game as a way to promote social policies like the Single Tax movement. She came up with the idea of the game by drawing inspiration from her favorite political figure Henry George. George wrote a book called Progress and Poverty in which he declares that a large amount of poverty comes from the land monopolies gripping the country. Lizzie wanted her game to represent the fundamental theories that George explains in his book with thirty-six spaces with “properties” around the outside of the board. After the game gained a slight following Lizzie brought “the landlord’s game” to a large name publisher “Parker Brothers game company” who deemed Magies game to be too complicated, too educational, and a high risk of failing because of the politics in the game. However, it still held its footing in the twenties and thirties in the classroom for professors and its popularity surged during the great depression. Charles Brace Darrow a man who played the Atlantic city version of the game created his own version with a new board and graphics to go along with it. He went to Wanamaker’s Department store in Philadelphia to sell his new version he dubbed “Monopoly”. Darrows game had all the same characteristics as Lizzies game but without all the downsides of “education” and politics that were otherwise dragging the game down. After Magies patent was bought out in 1993 the Parker Brothers Game Company had released “Monopoly” and by 1995 they had sold five hundred thousand copies of Darrows version. However, the underlying tone of monopoly has never changed over the years despite many not knowing its meaning. Monopoly being the huge success that it is has had a crazy amount of influence on the world for just being a regular board game. A large part of my life and probably many of my fellow students’ early lives were spent playing monopoly with friends and family. Not to mention where I’m from in Dallas there’s an entire neighborhood called “Park Place” with street signs named after the properties in a board game called monopoly.